Pyongyang - by Guy Delisle (Paperback)

About the Book

One of the few Westerners granted access to North Korea documents his observations of the secretive society in this graphic travelogue that depicts the cultural alienation, boredom, and desires of ordinary North Koreans.

Book Synopsis

The perennial graphic novel about a "hermit country," with a new cover and an introduction by Gore Verbinski

Guy Delisle's Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea is the graphic novel that made his career, an international bestseller for more than ten years. Delisle became one of the few Westerners to be allowed access to the fortress-like country when he was working in animation for a French company.

While living in the nation's capital for two months on a work visa, Delisle observed everything he was allowed to see of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered, bringing a sardonic and skeptical perspective on a place rife with propaganda. As a guide to the country, Delisle is a non-believer with a keen eye for the humor and tragedy of dictatorial whims, expressed in looming architecture and tiny, omnipresent photos of the president. The absurd vagaries of everyday life become fodder for a frustrated animator's musings as boredom and censorship sink in. Delisle himself is the ideal foil for North Korean spin, the grumpy outsider who brought a copy of George Orwell's 1984 with him into the totalitarian nation.

Pyongyang is an informative, personal, and accessible look at a dangerous and enigmatic country.

Review Quotes

"Guy Delisle is a wry 37-year-old French Canadian cartoonist whose work for a French animation studio requires him to oversee production at various Pacific Rim studios on the grim frontiers of free trade. His employer puts him up for months at a time in 'cold and soulless' hotel rooms where he suffers the usual maladies of the long-term boarder: cultural and linguistic alienation, boredom, and cravings for Western food and real coffee. Delisle depicts these sojourns into the heart of isolation in [the] brilliant 'graphic novel' . . . "Pyongyang."" --"Foreign Affairs"

About the Author

Born in Québec City, Canada, in 1966, Guy Delisle now lives in the south of France with his wife and two children. Delisle spent ten years working in animation, which allowed him to learn about movement and drawing. He is best known for his travelogues about life in faraway countries: Burma Chronicles, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Pyongyang, and Shenzhen. He has since expanded his oeuvre by telling a Doctors Without Borders acquaintance's story as a nail-biting thriller (Hostage) and revisiting his teen years and first summer job (Factory Summers).